FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Roger Warin]

Emerald is a green gem variety of Beryl. The majority of the world's gem quality Emeralds come from the Muzo area of Colombia.

[Roger Warin]

Some epidotes…

[Jordi Fabre]

Barcelona 07/04/2015

As I'm waiting for the results of the analysis of some of the novelties I found in Ste. Marie I will wait to these analysis to publish my summary of the Show.

On the meantime what I should do is publish how gratifying is to see how an entire people has overturned to ITS Show. It is wonderful to see how, headed by the Mayor Claude Abel, the vast majority of the inhabitants of Ste. Marie are completely devoted to achieve that everything be "comme il faut". You can not ask for a more friendly attitude or for a deeper desire to do things well. Bravo!

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Barcelona 07/11/2015

What's new in Ste. Marie 2015? I have my own vision of it, complemented with the comments of other dealers/visitors with whom I discussed this topic in Ste. Marie, so, let's go...

Ste. Marie is, year after year, the most important Show for Moroccan minerals. The reasons for this are multiple: probably due to its peculiar atmosphere, the fact that the Show is in an open space and maybe also due to the timing of the year of the Show, before the really hot Moroccan summer and after the winter & spring which usually is the most productive time for mining Moroccan minerals. In Ste. Marie the Moroccan dealers take over the city (literally), renting many houses in the town of Ste. Marie and occupying a large part of the selling spaces at the Show. As a consequence usually the major part of the new discoveries at this Show are related with Morocco. If you add to this my personal passion for the Moroccan minerals, here you have the result :

• Bad news for the "crazy" blue Barytes from Ouichane. It seems that from September-October 2014 there were no more major finds, we should see what happens in the future...
  As a consequence many Ouichane Barytes from old finds have changed hands quickly to people who wanted to secure this material. The best ones are such nice material that probably it is not a bad idea to have some of them, even considering the risk that in the future they will find more.



• Good news for the Oumjrane area. Bou Nahas is producing a lot of Pyrites, Marcasites, Barytes and even many Coppers, some of them of great quality. A wonderful addition to these finds was a new discovery of Azurites, probably made in some of the old shafts of this mining area. It is a find of extraordinary Azurites with minor Malachite and Baryte, they have a nice shape, a vivid blue color and a fantastic luster, creating in fact a very similar look to the famous "electric blue" Azurites from Milpillas.



• Excellent news about the Bouismas Mine. This mine is working again and after its re-opening it has already delivered a bonanza of new stuff: good to very good Löllingites, numerous Realgars and some red-red Proustites. Great mine!.
  Also in the Bou Azzer area they opened a new shaft in Aït Ahmane, the classic locality for the Gersdorffites, and from now this new shaft is supplying, at about 200 meter deep, yellowish gemmy Sphalerites (mostly like the Huanggang ones not like the Spanish ones) and some well crystallized Silvers and sharp Djurleite-Chalcocite (intergrowth). The fine Gersdorffites seen in Ste. Marie came from the old filons 51 & 55 of Aït Ahmane



• Exciting news about a new shaft: Tazalarht, located close the regular quarries of Tazalarht where in recent years many bladed Azurites and some good Coppers came out. From January 2015 new fine Erythrites were found there with Phlogopite and a mix of Chalcocite-Djurleite-Digenite, funny associations true?. The quality of these Erythrites from Tazalarht is similar or even better than the famous Bou Azzer ones, that in fact are located about 500 Km from Tazalarht!



• Funny news about a find in some place around Agadir. In some of the classic Quartz geodes ("coconuts") from this area they found inside some of these "coconuts" very aesthetic sprays of Gypsum on Quartz. If they find more in the future it could become a classic-commercial item for Morocco, due to its elegance.



• To complete my report about the Moroccan novelties, add that in addition to the regular flow of all kinds of cheap stuff I also saw a good array of samples of Fluorites from the Sidi Ayad area, coated or not coated with Azurite-Malachite, many Cerussites (some very good) from Mibladen and also large geodes of very nice Celestine from Jebel Mahlouch (15-20 km West of Midelt). On the other hand I didn’t see many good Vanadinites, nor Imilchil material or good Erythrites from Bou Azzer.

Let's visit now the rest of the world. The main novelty in Ste. Marie was, in my opinion, the find in April 2015 in level 26 of the Milpillas Mine an extraordinary pocket of Volborthites, with or without Azurite, most of them standing up on a snow white matrix. For the moment it is a little bit hidden find but is really impressive, probably a reference for the future.

To do easier I will list below by countries the other novelties I have seen:

• Portugal: magnificent, luminous, Furcalites with or without Autunite from the Assunçao Quarry and the regular array of unusual specimens from the upper levels of the Panasqueira Mine.



• Malawi: attractive V-shape, smoky Quartz epitactic after feldspar which has been eroded away, very similar to the Namibian ones described by John S. White in the Rocks & Minerals magazine (vol. 87, Sept./Oct. 2012, pp. 459-462), but with the typical combo of small Malawi species related with it.



• China: very large crystals of Pyromorphite coated / replaced by Plumbogummite from new finds from January-February 2015 in the Yangshuo Mine and new Wulfenites from the Jianshan Mine as well as a kind-of-alpìne pink Fluorites from the Huanggang area, both slightly different than previous finds.



• Hungary: more fine Opals (hyalite variety) from Tarcal with some of them on Aragonite.



• Iran: very large and colorful demantoids, but this time on matrix, not just single crystals.



• Russia: unusual association of Miersites on crystallized Azurites from the Rubtsovskoe Mine.



• Brazil: a large suite of Vivianites and Ludlamites from the Cabeça do Cachorro claim, Amazonas.



• Peru: several more of the outstanding Stolzites coating Scheelites on Quartz from the Mundo Nuevo Mine, Peru.

This is what touched my soul in Ste. Marie. Again, these are the finds that for one reason or another catch my eye, so is just "my list". No doubt that the number of novelties displayed in Ste. Marie was larger and I'm sure you will read about them and see their images in the columns that will be published during the next months in the magazines like Mineralogical Record, Mineral Up, Lapis, Mineralien Welt, Règne Minéral, Rivista Mineralogica Italiana... Don't miss them!

More to come...

Jordi
PS:Thanks to John White for editing this text as well as to Christian Mondeillh, great connoisseur of the Moroccan deposits.

[Roger Warin]

Fluorites...

[Roger Warin]

Still some red fluorites

[Roger Warin]

Two other fluorites

[chris]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the photos & your impressions Jordi. Roger I hope you have some more.

[Roger Warin]

Oh yes...
Fluorites play with colors

[Roger Warin]

Galena.

[Roger Warin]

Exceptional fine Crystal of Jordanite from the Lengenbach Quarry, associated with other rare sulfosalts.

[Roger Warin]

Hessonite, a gemological term, belongs to the grossular garnet group. While most grossular garnet is green, the hessonite variety typically has a vivid orange-brown color.
It’s one of the nine planetary gemstones ! Where’s Pluto ?
Hessonite is typically associated with diopside (a calcic clinopyroxene) in the Val d’Aosta (Italy).

[Roger Warin]

Gwindel quartz or twisted quartz.

Crystalline individuals are associated according to a sub-parallel growth. There is a more or less a slight offset at each step.
The “c” axis of diverse individuals is parallel to the base. The twisted group develops along an "a" axis perpendicular to the "c" axis.
At each addition of an individual, there is a slight position shift that will create spin. They are not twinned. The rotation can be done right or left with the same probability.

[Roger Warin]

Gwindel

For the most spectacular Gwindels, the edifice can be quite high compared to the elongation of individuals.

[Roger Warin]

Sugar habit…
Also worth mentioning is that individuals can be more or less fine, as shown in the profile of the various apexes. At the limit, can be achieved even continuity, apexes blending then one curved edge, since there rotation of the construction. Light reflections show the torsion of the common face to the whole group. Thus talk of semi-closed or fully closed Gwindel. The French cristalliers kindly referred to these as "sugars" they form. True, they also suck them to clean on the summits ...
With the profile of the group, one can deduce the chirality.

[Roger Warin]

Kyanite – Staurolite epitaxy
Pizzo Forno, Tessin, CH.

I admit I do not see on the picture that famous epitaxy of staurolite on blue kyanite. Are these the two aligned crystals near the center of the photo?
In this epitaxy, the cleavage plane (100) of kyanite roughly coincides with the cleavage plane (010) of staurolite. (Friedel 1926).

[James Catmur]

Thank you Jordi and Roger - great information and photos

[Roger Warin]

Morganite
Morganite is a pink orange variety of beryl containing lithium and cesium.
I do not know why Morganite is a flattened variety of beryl.
Is morganite not elongated along the c axis, because of Cs ???
Pezzotaite, a similar mineral species with Cs, is not elongated too.

[Fiebre Verde]

Roger,
I have seen the emerald specimen featured in your photo Emeraude_00356_R in various shows prior to Sainte-Marie. Too good to be true!
Its price keeps going down show after show.
Gérard

[Roger Warin]

Gérard,
I do not know the price of this emerald. I was not interested in it. Possible gluing are not shown on a picture.
Roger.